Urban society and the borough court – conference

The legal network of medieval and pre-modern Europe offered multiple routes to justice. For urban residents, borough courts and other civil courts offered widespread recourse to law, allowing ordinary residents to air complaints about economic disputes and interpersonal misbehaviour, arising from the interactions of everyday life. These courts existed alongside national criminal legal systems and a network of multiple other jurisdictions. Their records reveal how individuals, communities and officials perceived of the correct rules of economic and social relations and the steps that could be taken when these rules were not adhered to.

This conference provides multiple perspectives on a broad range of urban courts, with papers from historians working across the medieval-early modern periods and on regions across Europe. It will provide a valuable opportunity for historians to consider the wealth of evidence contained within the records of premodern European courts and to consider the legal network across a broad spectrum of place and time.